DeBoer has launched four extended-stay brands during his 45-plus years in the hotel industry—which he entered after a successful but rocky run in the apartment business. Residence Inn, Summerfield Suites and Candlewood Suites each have DeBoer’s fingerprints all over them. So does his current product, Value Place, which DeBoer admits might be more like an apartment building than a hotel.   “My sense is we’re more apartment than we are hotel,” DeBoer said during an interview held at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis.

“We perhaps have the operating numbers of a hotel, but we have the operating model of an apartment, and I like that, the apartment operating model, because there’s such favorable financing out there through (the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development) and all these other things.” The minimum stay at Value Place is seven days, and the average length of stay is about 70 days, according to DeBoer. There are 171 properties open with four under construction. The CEO of Value Place said the product has attracted apartment builders and hotel developers.

“Hotel developers find it rather difficult to operate a property that doesn’t have a 24/7 front desk, to operate a property that doesn’t have housekeeping every day, to operate a property that doesn’t have free breakfast,” DeBoer said. “They find it difficult to operate a property that doesn’t have frills. And they find it difficult to operate a property that they have 4.5 (full-time employees). That’s the secret. The secret sauce of Value Place is not the building; it’s the operating model.”  click here for full story…